My name is Gina Helfrich; I’m the Communications Director and Program Manager for Diversity & Inclusion at NumFOCUS. I used to be Director of the Harvard College Women’s Center and was co-founder of a company called recruitHER, a staffing firm devoted to helping tech companies become more diverse and inclusive (now closed).

I live in Austin, Texas, where I’ve been very involved in organizing and supporting women in tech groups. My Ph.D. is in Philosophy. I spent time working in higher education administration (plus some teaching on the side), but I have really enjoyed the past 3 years in the technology sector. I’m especially happy to have found a wonderful organization like NumFOCUS! I enjoy working to support scientists and researchers, and I also like doing the “translation” work that makes advances in scientific computing more accessible to a wide audience. I see myself as helping to build a vibrant global community of people using NumFOCUS projects in interesting and innovative ways.

Hi! My name is Julia Meinwald – I live in NYC too (well, technically Jersey City, now, but I still identify as a “New Yorker” from over ten years in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan.)

I’m really new to this community – I started working as an Open Source Coordinator at Two Sigma Investments last year. My background is not technical at all, so I’ve been trying to sponge up as much as I can. There’s so much to learn, both about the open source products we use and develop at my company, and about open source governance and how the whole ecosystem works.

I went to school for music composition, and am still active in the musical theatre community (if you want a total diversion, you can check out my work here: www.juliameinwald.com) I even got to combine my love of music with my quest to learn more about open source technology by writing a piece on Sonic Pi (http://sonic-pi.net/).

I’m really excited to meet everyone and learn from this great group of people!

I am Rob Harbert, Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. I’ve been in NYC, living in Brooklyn and workign at the museum for a year. My group of scientists at the museum is small (4 people), but all of us are working on computational research in ecology and evolutionary biology. I’m excited for the chance to step out into the broader data science/programming/tech community. I am very interested to see how this goes and what I can learn about enhancing diversity and inclusion in undergraduate education in computational biology and bioinformatics as I apply for academic jobs this season.

My name is Amelia Kallaher; I’m the Applied Social Sciences Librarian for Mann Library at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. I work with students studying in Development Sociology and Policy Analysis and Management. I became interested in data science when I worked on a project with a data science grad student analyzing the use of library collections. We presented at the Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference last year and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I’m new to this community but excited to learn from others. Looking forward to connecting with everyone!

I am James Horine. I am a Senior Data Scientist working in Chicago, IL. I am actively helping our company build, document, and test data science products that we custom build for clients. So, I spend a lot of time doing things I have absolutely no clue how to accomplish - lots of self study. I am always happy to discuss a journey into and around data science. I make no claims that any one path is in any sense, optimal (although some make it easier).

Additionally, I am active with Chicago’s very own Queer Tech Club (QTC), whereby we provide an avenue for LGBT of all walks of life a social and professional networking outlet.